


What Immortal Eye

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, BAMF Jace Wayland, BAMF Magnus Bane, Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt Magnus Bane, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired By Tumblr, Jace Wayland Deserves Nice Things, Jace Wayland Feels, Jace Wayland Needs A Hug, Jace Wayland is a Herondale, Jace Wayland-centric, M/M, Magnus Bane Deserves Nice Things, Mostly H/C really though, Of the violent variety, POV Magnus Bane, Past Child Abuse, Prompt: Soulmates, Sad Magnus, Soulmates share eyecolours, There is some graphic images in this, Warning: Valentine, Writer's Month 2019
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 21:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20280037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Growing up with tri-coloured eyes is…an interesting experience.In a world where soulmates share eyes, the journey of Magnus Bane and Jace Herondale to find one another is more fraught than most.But out of the deepest pain, sometimes, the most beautiful of sights can bloom.





	What Immortal Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Takara_Phoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Takara_Phoenix/gifts).

> AN: Based on an Anon prompt on the wonderful TakaraPhoenix’s tumblr, she very graciously okayed me making an attempt at doing it justice!  
Here is the tumblr post:  
@ THAT ANON WHO SUGGESTED THE “SOULMATES SHARE EYES” AU: I’M SORRY I’M A FOOL, AN IDIOT! I DIDN’T SEE THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY FOR JAGNUS SOULMATE AU THERE!  
Jace with one cat-eye, a sign his soulmate is a Downworlder, would have gotten so much abuse from Valentine for it and would always hide it, glamour it away.  
And due to Jace’s heterochromia, if Magnus were to have the heterochromic eye, he wouldn’t even know what eye-color to look for in his soulmate, the blue or the brown or would his soulmate have heterochromia in both his eyes? And, fo course, Magnus always hides his warlock-mark away with a glamour too.  
This is the perfect Jagnus soulmate AU! And I didn’t immediately see it! *^*
> 
> Fic and chapter titles are from William Blake’s Tyger Tyger, cause I couldn’t resist ; )  
Canon? What canon? *Grins insouciantly* 
> 
> Chapters should be posted with relative frequency, as this is partially written already. Subsequent chapters will be rather longer.

“What pretty eyes your soulmate must have, old friend.” Ragnor is teasing him. Magnus knows this. It is a familiar jibe, tossed about down the centuries, a casual ribbing between the most intimate of friends.

With a lazy _flick_ of his eyes, Ragnor’s hair turns a most entertaining shade of candy floss pink.

Magnus blinks innocently in the face of his companion’s look of affrontary. He _knew_ better than to tease Magnus, on today of all days.

_Anak Iblis!_

Fine china does not _rattle_. Rather, it _shivers_. And shiver Magnus’ cup did, such was the force with which he reunited cup and saucer with.

There was nothing beautiful in a London winter, not for a child of heat and fire, as Magnus had always been, would always be. But this day, this day in the coldest depths of winter, his apathy for the season turned to outright _despisement_.

Magnus starred at the tea shimmering against the edge of the cup, images dancing across the surface. Flames. Blood. Screams.

“Did I ever tell you, that he had black eyes?” Magnus did not raise his own, even then. Could not bear to see the pain reflected back in his own, the pain of certainties too horrid to ever change, and memories too bitter to ever truly forget. “My stepfather.”

_Anak Iblis_. Such they had called his mother, in the village. Before the men came, and everthing _burned_. Before the man came, and everything was _pain_.

Before his mother met her _soulmate_.

Magnus could still taste the ash in his mouth. The ash from the day he burned _him_.

From the day_ they_ died.

“Forgive me, my friend. I did forget the day.” Magnus snorted wetly at the enunciation, as Ragnor knew he would.

He raised wet eyes, at long last, from their studious examination of his now cold tea. Ragnor’s mismatched brown-grey orbs blinked back at him, as kind and steady as they had always been.

“There is nothing to forgive,” A bejewelled hand clasped his friend’s, and when he drew away, the wild hair was once again a showstopping shade of emerald. “It was a long time ago.”

Magnus whirled from his chair, his eyes distant as they looked out at the snow softly falling across the darkening streets beyond.

Two hundred years to the day. A long time ago indeed.

The reflection that blinked back at him was suddenly an indistinguishable mix of blue and brown and black and gold. Bitterness coated Magnus’ throat.

How very _appropriate_.

With a slash of his fingers, the window went opaque, a psychedelic infinity of colours and shaes painting its surface in a riot of the finest stain glass.

He plastered a manic grin across his face, and steadfastly ignored Ragnor’s knowing eyes, as he twirled towards the kitchen, “More tea?”

Outside, beyond the riotous window panes, the snow fell in ever thicker drifts.

***

“What’s a soulmate?”

When Jace was six, he screwed up all his not inconsiderable courage, and asked his father a question. He no longer recalls where he even heard such a word, or why it seemed so important to him, to ask, to know.

But what he does know, is that he was six, and curious, and, as they was no one else to ask, he asked his father.

Later, what he will always remember, what he will never be able to forget, is the _heat_. So hot and so searing it could hardly be called mere _pain_.

The sheer _heat_ of the seraph blade as it was held against his eye. His right eye.

His cat eye. Jace loved that eye, so different than his left, which was odd and ugly and not even symmetrical in its _difference_.

But his right, so sharp it could pick out the furthest of targets, so bright it glowed on the darkest of nights. Sometimes, he would kneel by the stream, cover his left eye with his hand, and stare and stare and stare, until he almost seemed to see double.

Until he could almost imagine there was another eye looking back at him, an eye just like his own.

“Devil’s whore.” His father tosses a stele down beside the river bank as he walks away, leaving Jace too weak to so much as keen, his eye open and sightless and _white_.

As if Jace would know what such words meant, six years old and so very innocent, despite everything.

As if he had runes to apply the stele to.

It is two long years before Jace knows enough to risk drawing the iratze on his skin. The iratze he has known since before he could talk, one of his father’s only shreds of _mercy_.

But when he finally draws it, when sight finally returns to his right eye, it is in the certain knowledge that the concealment rune etched awkwardly into his right palm is strong and true and _safe_.

Jace never looks at his cat eye again, not for years, and years, and years.

He never dares to think about soulmates again, not for years, and years, and years.

And he never presumes to question his father again. About anything.

***

Magnus watches Tessa Grey lay eyes on Will Herondale for the first time.

Watches eyes catch and hold. Eyes that _match_.

Watches the light go out of Jem Carstairs’ gaze. Go out of eyes that _also match_.

That night, he lingers on London Bridge, gazing out at the reds and golds of the sunset as they play across the Thames’ waters, concealing the stench and pollution that lies beneath.

His glamour falls with a crack of thunder, a cloud literally chasing across the sky above.

His mother had _loved_ his right eye. The duality of the colours, so stark and yet so very beautiful.

_Annaku, how special your soulmate must be, to be blessed with such eyes._

Eye_s_, as if his other did not exist. His mother had been good at pretending.

Until she wasn’t anymore.

A beam of sunlight shone through the cloud, catching on the water and reflecting back at Magnus. The glow was mesmerizing, and for just a moment, as the water turned to gold, he could almost imagine that in those depths, reflecting back at him across distance and time, was someone’s gaze.

Someone whose eyes matched his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations: 
> 
> Anak Iblis: Indonesian for Devil's Child. 
> 
> Annaku: Indonesian for My child.


End file.
